Everything You Need to Know about Running Injuries

A little more than a week ago, while I was on vacation, New York
Times health writer, cyclist and runner Gina Kolata wrote a great
column, both personal and journalistic, about running injuries. When I started reading the column, I was
a little worried. My concern? That Kolata might have fallen for one of
the self-professed experts who claim to know how to prevent or cure
running injuries.

Fortunately, she didn't. She's too much of a pro for that. In a
well-balanced piece, Kolata seemed to conclude, with help from a
handful of knowledgeable sources, that every running injury is more or
less unique. In other words, there are no universal cures--not
orthotics, not stretching, not massage, not chiropractic, not
glucosamine, not fish oil, not strengthening and not physical therapy. The
last two are often better than the others, in my opinion, but that doesn't
make them anything close to universal solutions.

The only universal is running injuries themselves.

I like to say that the first intelligent runner hasn't been born yet. And
I'm not holding my breath. By this I mean that we are destined to repeat the mistakes of those who have gone before us. One by
one, fueled by our enthusiasm for running farther and faster and the
relatively rapid progress that can be made down this path, we all
increase our running until one of two things happens. Either we break
the world record for the marathon, or we get injured. In my experience,
the latter is the more frequent.

All of us have read articles reporting that something like 50 to 70
percent of runners get injured in a given year. There are three
important things you should know about this loose but scary-sounding statistic.

First, it means we all get injured eventually. Like, 100 percent of us.

Second, it's no big deal, since 100 percent of us also recover from our
running injuries. Okay, some recover better than others, but, c'mon, a
sore heel is rarely fatal.

Lastly, the 50-to-70-percent-per-year thing is completely meaningless, because
there's no control group. So far as I know, there's little information
about the number of non-runners who go to the doctor every year to
complain about toe, foot, leg, knee, hip or back pain. But I'm sure
it's a lot.

Consider this: There's some (modest) evidence that more non-runners
than runners suffer from knee arthritis and the like. The obesity and
inactivity epidemics among non-runners cause a lot of lower-body
complaints. Don't underestimate the toll. Medical studies are just beginning to try to define it.

So what should you do about running injuries? Here's the only advice I can give you: Stay constantly alert (ie, "Listen to your body"), because an injury is headed your way. The most effective way to get recover is to take time off from running, and the sooner and
more completely you rest, the better. All other responses, including
cross-training and the various therapies I dismissed above, are
reasonable enough. The Runner's World website has a large and thorough section on Injury Prevention. Check it out.

But don't expect miracles. Sure, they happen, but
not often enough that any one doctor, approach or supplement is going
to work every time.

Over the years, I've gotten a little better at dealing with my
occasional injuries. I don't panic the way I sometimes used to, though
there's one thing I still hate about running injuries: They never go
away when I want them to. They go away when they damn well feel like it.

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